03/23/2026
This is our little boy, Rory.
“He was born 37 years ago today, June 1st, a perfect baby with blond hair and blue eyes; the whole family was in love with him! He was happy and healthy and meeting all his milestones until his two-month well-baby checkup, when he was given the DTP shot (called the DPT shot back then). That was at 2:00 pm. By 6:00 pm, we were in Tampa General with him screaming the pertussis scream and covered with body fluids from head to toe. After examining him, Dr. Williams told us he didn’t expect him to live through the night.
Rory lived until he was 12. He was never able to hold his head up, crawl, walk, talk, feed himself, roll over, sit up, or play.
He did learn to smile, laugh, and roll his eyes when he didn’t want to go to bed. He learned one word, Ama, meaning me.
He loved the stories his sister read to him. He loved to be around other children, especially Matthew, who was also brain-injured by the Dtap shot. He loved vestibular stimulation, and the higher and faster the Ferris wheel, the better!
Over the years, we did everything we could to find help for him, including taking him to five different countries for therapy and stem cells and spending close to half a million dollars on his care.
When Rory died just short of his 13th birthday, it almost killed his father and me. We loved him to the moon and back, and we know he loved us. But it was better for him because he could not go on in a body that didn’t function in a brain that was increasingly not working.”💔- Susan
